Ethereum SHA256 return

I am a newbie to Ethereum please all bear with me: When we send something through the block chain the message or transaction is translated via SHA256. Lets say a contract is created and I want to see all and any transactions from my contract that processed through the block chain, is it possible to see all of this data without it returning in the SHA256 format? Can anyone provide feedback on how this can be accomplished?

challengeMadeEvent can now be used as a filter and you can either use .watch() or .get() to get nice javascript objects whenever the contract uses the event. challengeMadeEvent.get(), for example, gives an array of events, which looks like this.

There's a bunch of other things, like filtering the filter for topics (to only look for challenges against your own address, say), or using .watch() for a callback. Unfortunately, some of these things are currently broken/buggy, but it's looking to be the best way to learn what a contract is doing.